MASTER MECHANICS

24 MANUFACTURING europa star
In 2000, the Christophe Claret manufacture,
founded in 1989, set up shop in the Soleil d'Or,
a beautiful house built at the beginning of
the 20th century by the watchmaker, Urban
Jurgensen, on the heights of Le Locle, just
below the watch museum in Les Monts. Since
2000, the house has seen the addition of two
ultramodern wings. In this compact setting is
one of the most complete and performable
manufactures, as well as one of the most modern
and innovative. With this tool, Claret has
been able to realize, in hardly a dozen years, 63
original in-house calibres, of which the simplest
is a tourbillon. The day of our visit, the
manufacture was working in parallel on 46 different
calibres.A record, without a doubt.
All this obviously involves very rigorous coordination
when we think of the operational
flow that has to be managed, especially when
all these pieces are produced in only ‘small
SHABAKA
by Jean Dunand
series’—12,000 references on the list, or
12,000 operational ranges to develop, and
more than 2 million pieces in production and
in stock in the ‘Treasure Room’. It is here, in
the computer-managed card file, where the
finished pieces and the unfinished ones are
contained, making up the kits—80 per cent
will be distributed for assembly in-house and
20 per cent will be delivered as they are to the
brands that ordered them.
Symbioses between
movement and the case
One of the originalities of Claret is the way
that the movement and the case are designed,
constructed and produced together, in a close
symbiotic relationship, if we might use these
words. The research department dedicated
to calibres, with its ten constructors, is next to
the department dedicated to cases. Christian
Cartier, head of the design and technical
monitoring of the cases, explains that those
“intended to receive very specific and complex
movements are necessarily as sophisticated as
the mechanism they harbour, protect and
showcase. Like the construction of the calibres,
the production of the cases is an exercise
in innovation: articulated horns, lateral openings,
articulated fold-over clasps…”
The Claret ‘style’ is completely evident. By developing
his own manufacturing capabilities in the
domain of the movement, Christophe Claret
has given wings to his own type of watchmaking.
He has thus been able to develop specific
techniques such as the use of rollers like in the
Shabaka, for example, developed for Jean
Dunand (of which he is a partner with Thierry
Oulevay), a watch that is particularly exemplary
of this integration or this mutual pollination
between the mechanism and the case.
For the love of machines
This development has also been made possible
because Christophe Claret is nearly as fascinated
by the movements he designs as he is
by the machines he develops.A good example
is the ‘monster’ that was recently created for
the manufacture’s case department: a 17-axis
CNC, capable of working in pairs with 2 x 5
axes, which allows not only the operational
time to be divided in half, but also, by minimizing
the manipulations and adjustments, to
offer superlative tooling precision.
An additional example, not far away, in the
ebauche department, another machine is the
pride and joy of its owner: the Flashcut laser,
developed by the manufacture in collaboration